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Deep Learning Technology: Sebastian Arnold, Betty van Aken, Paul Grundmann, Felix A. Gers and Alexander Löser. Learning Contextualized Document Representations for Healthcare Answer Retrieval. The Web Conference 2020 (WWW'20)
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There is currently no specific therapy. Intravenous fluids and treatment of the hepatic encephalopathy may help. Increasing dietary levels of branched chain amino acids and feeding low protein diets can help signs of hepatic encephalopathy, which is often accomplished by feeding small amounts of grain and/or beet pulp, and removing high-protein feedstuffs such as alfalfa hay. Grazing on non-legume grass may be acceptable if it is late summer or fall, although the horse should only be permitted to eat in the evening so as to avoid photosensitization. Due to the risk of gastric impaction, stomach size should be monitored.
Sedation is minimized and used only to control behavior that could lead to injury of the animal and to allow therapeutic procedures, and should preferably involve a sedative other than a benzodiazepine. Stressing the animal should be avoided if at all possible. Plasma transfusions may be needed if spontaneous bleeding occurs, to replace clotting factors. Antibiotics are sometimes prescribed to prevent bacterial translocation from the intestines. Antioxidants such as vitamin E, B-complex vitamins, and acetylcysteine may be given. High blood ammonia is often treated with oral neomycin, often in conjunction with lactulose, metronidazole and probiotics, to decrease production and absorption of ammonia from the gastrointestinal tract.
The illness is generally self-limiting. Management on the whole is preventative, by limiting exposure to mouldy environments with ventilation, or by wearing respiratory protection such as facemasks.
Organic dust toxic syndrome (ODTS) is a potentially severe flu-like syndrome originally described in farmers, mushroom workers, bird breeders and other persons occupationally exposed to dusty conditions.
This depends on the degree of hepatocellular necrosis that has occurred. Decreases in the SDH and prothrombin time along with improvement in appetite are the best positive predictive indicators of recovery. GGT may remain elevated for weeks even if the horse is recovering. Horses that survive for greater than one week and that continue to eat usually recover. Cases with rapid progression of clinical signs, uncontrollable encephalopathy, haemorrhage or haemolysis have a poor prognosis. Horses that display clinical signs have a mortality rate of 50–90%.